


Connections

by Hibibun



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Metaphysical Bonding, Reluctant Relationship, Unhealthy Relationships, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:48:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25397935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hibibun/pseuds/Hibibun
Summary: If Agnes had already had her destiny taken from her, it only made sense she decide for herself what she wanted out of life. And that started with at least meeting the woman who took it from her.
Relationships: Agnes Montague/Gertrude Robinson
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	Connections

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't had the phrase metaphysical bond leave my brain since i heard it. also i am a sucker for i resent you and everything you are, but find myself inextricably attached to you and slowly realizing that this bond can only go deeper.

Gertrude did not really know anything about Agnes Montague other than she was born for a purpose that had to be stopped, and that she had long auburn hair. Or at one point in time, it had been long.

It wouldn’t be hard to find out if that still remained true. While she was still getting used to sometimes knowing things that she perhaps couldn’t have known, this was much different. Irrevocably, she had bound herself to that embodiment of living flame and whether that was necessarily a good idea or not at the time—it served its purpose.

As such, there was a woman now out there who she could feel and could feel her back. Never more than a gentle tug, the simplest of threads that in Agnes’s case wasn’t quiet roped into a noose, but might as well have been. Gertrude feels it, her agonizing misery and loss of self, but in the end cannot sympathize. It has never been in her nature really. 

For her, The Desolation holds a special candle of disdain. Even if it is not because of Agnes Montague, destroying her purpose in life was merely a payback she unfortunately found herself in the middle of.

So it is unexpected, when she finds a woman she does not know, yet _knows_ to be Agnes Montague waiting for her outside the Magnus Institute one afternoon. She had been just meaning to step out for lunch, the day uniquely sunny for London, albeit humid. That sickly heat only feels like it increases tenfold as she levels her gaze properly, noting faintly that Agnes did still have pretty, long, auburn hair.

“Miss Agnes Montague, is there something you need at the Institute?” Gertrude asks, unfazed by her appearance and only calculating how next to proceed.

It takes a beat for Agnes to turn away from the large building behind Gertrude and properly look at her. That thread that holds them now feels tight and pinched. She says nothing, but her eyes are burning coals, which have Gertrude on edge.

“No, I was merely wondering what it would look like if I set it ablaze.” She speaks evenly, even as that anger previously evident simmered down. Distantly, she continues on and her thoughts come across disconnected.

“What would happen to you? And what would happen to me?”

“I can assure you, I don’t plan on dying quite yet. And burning down the Institute well… I don’t think it’d kill me, unless you were planning to do so with me still inside. Frankly, you’d have better luck trying right here and now. That is if you believe you’ll come out unscathed,” Gertrude observes, mildly amused at the idea and assurance that it won’t happen. For as angry and lost as Agnes feels, she doesn’t actually want to die—at least she can’t die like this.

A smile slowly widens on Agnes’s face towards her remarks, but she never offers any insight to what she actually thinks about Gertrude’s assertions.

“Perhaps we can find out another time. For now, would you like to have lunch with me?”

Gertrude accepts. There is a little café around the corner and down the street from the Institute and they walk side by side, their steps steadily synchronizing even though they are virtually strangers. For several years, they have only been vaguely aware of one another, unable to truly push the other way. It is a burden, unpleasant and sticky like the sweat beginning to stick to the back of Gertrude’s shirt.

When they enter the café, it takes a moment for the server to even realize they are together. It isn’t until they are left alone do the words tumble out.

“I think it would have been easier had you just killed me, but instead you had to trust a spider.” Agnes starts, the beginning of a statement she had no realization she was giving.

“I never asked to be born. No one ever really does, but my _destiny_ , my upbringing, all of it so heavily regulated and curated was something I never wanted. They say it was that endless flame in me that made me angry, but y’know, I think I just couldn’t stand how much of it all I never really had a say in. I accepted it at some point, of course. What else could I say or do? Part of me maybe for a little while, had even come to want it, but now?” She pauses, utter hatred flickering across her face. For them, for herself, for the future ripped from her fingertips, Gertrude couldn’t tell, but she listened nonetheless.

“They didn’t even want me meeting you, but just once, I wanted to see what kind of person you really are. I wanted to see for myself.”

“You aren’t the woman I thought you’d be, though. With a plan that desperate and reckless, I had expected… someone more afraid maybe, but you don’t even seem to care that I’m here. You didn’t bat an eye even when I threatened you.”

“Because I know you aren’t going to act on it. And yes, maybe my plan could have been better, but well. What’s done is done.” Gertrude interrupts and feels oddly like she’s talking to an unruly child compared to someone almost the same age as her, even if she doesn’t look it.

That irritation yearning to burst out is drenched as their orders arrive. Gertrude giving a polite thanks, while Agnes quietly stares her down.

“I don’t have to kill you to hurt you. You should be at least a little afraid of me. Why aren’t you?”

Gertrude doesn’t answer her right away, busy with cutting into her food. She doesn’t know how to explain to Agnes that while she isn’t incapable of feeling fear, it isn’t practical to do so. For the things she has to take care of, it was simply something that would have hindered her and so she tossed it to the side. Right now, while she doesn’t exactly like the prospect of being hurt, it doesn’t scare her in this line of work anymore. In fact, there is even an aspect that has her a little curious.

A hypothesis stirring in the back of her mind ignored once it became pointless, now back because of the opportunity in front of her.

“Is the thread stitching your clothes together afraid of the needle that strung it there? Is it afraid of the thing it is now stuck to? It’s merely a truth of the situation, a fact I cannot deny because I am the one who did it. If you were to try to harm me, I must admit I think I am only curious insofar as to how it would affect you as well.”

Faster than she’d anticipate, and much too quick for her to wretch her hand back, Agnes’s fingers are latched to her wrist. She isn’t exerting any actual power—Gertrude would feel that if she were—instead simply holding it. Her fingers are long and wrap around her wrist in a way that she would sooner attribute to the hellish descriptions given to variations of the Spiral she’s found. Still, that heat starts to overwhelm, not melting her flesh, but similar to the way a faucet will sometimes heat too long when washing dishes. However, it is the accompanying feelings pouring in that get to her. Deeper than any sort of accidental things that find her, suddenly all that is Agnes Montague is laid before her eyes and the pain and the misery and the endless, beautiful engulfing heat surrounds her.

“How does it feel?” Gertrude calmly asks, assessing the situation, but not at all realizing until the sharp glare Agnes directs up at her that her question was too pointed. Too interested.

She shivers and takes her hand back as quick as she’d placed it.

“You know. You felt it too. I met the man who did that to your cat. He’s already dead.”

Gertrude breaks their staring and takes another bite of her lunch. She doesn’t know how to feel about that. Pleased and uncomfortable. In equal parts, she was a private person because she preferred it, and with the list of enemies she was building, it was easier.

Having this twinge of understanding though, a tiny and unfathomable connection was something Gertrude didn’t quite want, but was stuck with. Gertrude couldn’t recall another moment in her life, since maybe childhood, where she desired the presence or touch of another person, but now she can’t help feeling disconnected from something bigger than herself.

Whatever feeling their connection gave before paled in comparison to that exchange.

Abruptly, Agnes stands and fishes out money for her drink, despite not taking a single sip. She hovers for just a moment beside Gertrude, and she disguises the flinch as those long fingers reach out once again. Agnes simply touches the side of her tea cup and within moments, plumes of steam rising again from the cold tea.

“So you _can_ feel fear.” She quietly comments. An emptiness to the observation that she doesn’t clarify on before taking her leave.

Gertrude continues on with her day, as if the event never happened. Distantly, she wonders if this is what they meant when Agnes said they hadn’t wanted them meeting each other. It isn’t until she is locking up the archives, saying a curt goodnight to James Wright who happens to be leaving the same time as her, where she gives the event any proper thought. There’s something notably suspicious in the way he suggests she take care getting home that has an edge of paranoia creep back in, but like with most of the man’s actions, she can never attribute them to anything specific enough. Still, if it feels more so like there is someone watching her as she makes it back to her flat, it is something she has simply gotten used to.

What is far more worrying is the light, which shouldn’t be on, coming from her window. Carefully, she unlocks the door, hand at the ready for the small knife she’s taken to caring on her person. However, when she peeks in, there is only a woman sitting at her kitchen table, her back to the door and presenting familiar long, red hair.

“Miss Montague, I wasn’t expecting another visit so soon.” Gertrude greets her as she removes her bag and hat, hanging it on a rack, holding a jacket she doesn’t expect to be needing any time soon.

She twists around and if she is irritated at the blasé way the archivist reacts to her presence, she doesn’t show it. Gertrude merely walks by her, setting the kettle on the stove. It’s late, but with an unexpected guest, instinct applies. It is the only indication that she has even acknowledged Agnes’s presence beyond addressing her as she leaves the room to get changed while it boils.

The fact she’s followed is interesting, but as she’s already stated—there isn’t fear here. Whatever happened earlier was jarring enough for Agnes that she doesn’t think she’ll do it again. Even though both of them felt something else when they touched, it was something that burned just as painfully as it was pleasant.

Agnes doesn’t actually enter her bedroom, and only stares from the threshold. Gertrude dresses with her back to her, slipping on a long nightgown. There’s an uncomfortable intimacy to it, but one that feels right. If anyone were to be this close to her, it would be the person who saw and felt it all, however unwilling that connection may be. 

The floor creaks, but the steps are slow, uncertain. A jerky thing that is moving not quite because it wants to, or knows why, but simply because it is compelled to move. Ever so gently, Agnes touches her bare shoulder, tracing down to a scar she knows is exposed on her upper back. Unintentionally, Gertrude shivers. The touch was unexpected, though much easier to anticipate than the one in the café.

It makes her feel raw and exposed. Burned physically from the touch, and mentally from the exchange. A meeting of Eye and Flame, twined together by Web. She doesn’t want to burn her eyes out from looking, and neither does Agnes, but neither can look or pull away.

The shrill of the kettle eventually breaks the spell, and this time it is Gertrude who has pulled away. Neither of them speak as Gertrude goes about the methodical process of flicking the flame off, getting cups and preparing the tea.

Predictably, Agnes doesn’t actually drink hers. There are hundreds of days sitting now in Gertrude’s mind of cups of tea left untouched.

“I know you didn’t come here for tea.” Gertrude broaches the subject, still unsettled from earlier. Mostly, because she wishes it hadn’t stopped, and that is cause for worry.

Agnes runs her finger along the rim of the cup, and eventually settles for looking out the window.

“Jude almost didn’t let me out. She said I seemed different.” Agnes’s finger stills. “Do I seem different?”

“I wouldn’t know.” Gertrude muses, but they both know it’s a lie. They both know what is different and smoldering the small carpet she keeps underneath the kitchen table.

It’s the first time Gertrude hears her laugh, and it’s a hollow and hoarse.

“This is the second time I’ve met you, and yet you know me better than anyone else. Likely better than anyone I will ever meet. Isn’t that funny?” Agnes explains with a twinge of bitterness and resentment in her tone.

“ _You_ couldn’t even leave me a choice in that.”

Gertrude offers her a rare pitying smile, because while she may have placed them in this situation, it isn’t like she is not a part of it. Always in that thread connecting them was a pulling tug, desperate for some kind of understanding. And now they’re here and it feels like the thread is going to burn them alive. Perhaps, that was what the spider was hoping for all along. Or maybe it is simply the nature of fire in of itself.

“I’ll ask you one more time, what is it that you came here for?” Gertrude repeats with no genuine threat in her voice. It’s late and she doesn’t have any happy answers for Agnes.

She hears the chair scrape across the wood, as Agnes stands and takes three graceful steps to where Gertrude is seated. Her hands brace the back of the chair, as she leans in, but Gertrude does not flinch. Instead, she has to force herself from being drawn closer in.

“Kiss me. I can tell you want to, and it’s fine.”

“What happens if you burn me alive?”

“I’ll just burn with you.” Agnes answers her in a hushed voice, before joining their lips.

**Author's Note:**

> may or may not add an accompanying piece to this some day or another chapter, but for now :)
> 
> as usual if i missed tagging something let me know and thank you for reading!


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